this could be our reward
by 1755
Summary: Sirius is nearly dead when he knocks on Remus' door one night late June, and as he does the sky opens up to pierce his skin with liquid shards of glass.
_and this could be our reward_
 _this could be it_  
 _(this could be all we're owed)_  
 _(all we're owed, all we're getting)_

there's an arc by hey rosetta!

* * *

Sirius is nearly dead when he knocks on Remus' door one night late June, and as he does the sky opens up to pierce his skin with liquid shards of glass as if to say _you, you do not belong here_. And if the Dementors hadn't taken his sense of irony and humour away along with his happiness and the bits of his soul he'd cherished the most, he would have laughed up the clouds and said _I know_.

As it stands, he is weak, and his hands and feet are cut-up, bleeding red-hot where Padfoot had been unable to avoid the stones on his way up to the cliff, and he does not have the energy to do anything but bow his head against the rain and hope that someone will answer soon.

As it stands, he cannot stand for very much longer, because Dumbledore is a bastard who'd given him only vague directions and one ham-and-cucumber sandwich, and Sirius had spent a week trying to find his way to the other side of the country to find a house that is red, or yellow maybe, the old man had said, though he hadn't said how precariously fragile on a rocky precipice overlooking the sea it would look.

He knocks again, strongly enough so that somewhere in a far-away desert a camel's back breaks, and Sirius falls to the wet stone pathway with little more than a soft _thump_.

* * *

Remus picks Sirius up from the rocks and picks himself up from rock-bottom too (for good measure). Sirius is shivering, feverish, and his broad shoulders twist inward when Remus strips him from his muddied, torn robes and places his body gently under a lukewarm shower spray. The old plumbing in the rented house creaks as Remus uses his last sliver of soap to scrub Sirius' skin raw, until the water runs clear instead of the colour of mud-and-blood. He cleans and bandages an infected gash on the man's right foot, and they speak not one word throughout the whole process. Remus dries Sirius with his only towel, and dresses him in the clothes from his wardrobe with the least amount of holes, and makes him breakfast for supper with his last three eggs and the stale butt of a loaf of bread.

"I ate a rat for the first time, not too long ago," Sirius finally says in between mouthfuls of over-salted scrambled eggs. "Never was able to, before."

It is dark, and the moonlight and the raindrop-shadows paint eerie patterns on Sirius' cheek. Remus stares at him through coffee-scented steam and can't think of anything to say that isn't scathing or useless, so he settles for the second.

"Was it any good?" he asks, and Sirius' breath stutters like a convulsion, which Remus supposes is the only way Sirius knows how laugh anymore.

"Yeah. Should have done it a long time ago. You shouldn't drink coffee so late, you know. You'll never sleep."

Remus doesn't quite have the words to tell him that it isn't the coffee that keeps him up at night.

"I burn through caffeine. You know that, it's a werewolf thing," he says instead. Sirius' eyes jerk up at the word, as if –

"Oh. I forgot."

* * *

They sit in the kitchen until Sirius' trembling subsides and Remus' skin begins to tingle with the promise of lightning, the pressure on his old bones lifting as the moon hides behind a dark-grey storm cloud. That was something Sirius and James could never comprehend - how Remus is not sometimes wolf and mostly man, but is always a wolf-man hybrid who feels the movement of the moon deep in his spine all the time, and whose hunger gnaws at his stomach with too-dull teeth constantly.

Peter had understood, of course. Peter had understood everything, except maybe how much they'd loved him, though to be fair (for once), they themselves hadn't known it either until it was too late, much too late.

"Why are the lights off?" Sirius says, standing on weak legs and leaving his plate on the table.

"Too expensive." He lights his wand to stumble through the small corridor of the bungalow, not bothering to look behind to see if Sirius is following, which is somewhat appropriate, considering.

"Why don't you just Confund your landlord?"

It is something a younger Sirius – _Padfoot_ – would have said, and something Remus would have narrowed his eyes at, in a different lifetime. A suggestion, like the leaving of a plate on a table, borne from the recesses of a mind that still belong in a Noble and Most Ancient House and in an underground silver-dungeon common room.

"Here's the bedroom," Remus says instead of answering. "There are more blankets in the closet in the hall. I've left out an extra toothbrush for you in the bathroom."

Sirius stops – lightning lights the room and Remus counts one, two, three, four before the thunder rolls in behind it - and looks back.

"You're not – you're not going to stay?" he asks, in a voice that belongs in a fire-warmed golden-tower common room.

Remus closes his eyes. "Okay," he says.

"Okay."

* * *

There is a space between them wide as the Atlantic that rages against the bluff outside. Or as wide as the North Sea, maybe. A chasm, anyway, even though the bed is small and the blankets are thin and the sheets are rough and Sirius' body is still fever-hot, which is good because it means Remus won't have to turn up the heat during the night. It's been a colder than usual June, and even Remus, whose wolf-hewn body runs at a higher temperature than most, has felt the chill set in most nights.

"You don't actually have to stay," Sirius says suddenly, his hoarse voice too loud for the room, yet too quiet for the storm.

Remus sighs, and thinks. The bed is barely bowed at all from the weight of them, and he can't decide if it says more about the quality of the mattress or their own malnutritioned bodies.

"It's okay," he says again after a moment, "I'm sure you don't like being alone." The _anymore_ he wants to add is stolen away by a roll of thunder.

"I'm being selfish," and Sirius turns on his side to look at Remus, who doesn't move, only stares up at the ceiling in the dark as if it were a sky full of stars with a moon that he hates.

"It's comforting to know some things haven't changed."

There is that strange little half-laugh again, like a dog sneezing, like the real laughter has gotten caught in his throat and he's had to swallow it back down like so much bitter bile.

"Yes, so it is," says Sirius. Suddenly, too suddenly, there is a hand touching Remus' arm, burning into his skin so hot it might leave scars. A question, tentative and blistering.

Remus flinches away, a response which he supposes is one of a million possible answers, not one of them right, though maybe this one is wrong. But the dangling possibility of human contact is too much for an old werewolf to take, and this time he doesn't move when Sirius presses his too-thin razor-sharp paper-skin body close. They do not fit together like they used to, and maybe Sirius finally understands what it's like to live in a body to which you do not belong, because he takes up more space than he needs, and Remus curls in on himself like he's meant to.

"You've changed," Sirius breathes close to his ear. He's wrong, of course, because it is Sirius who has changed, who's always changed with the tides, and Remus still drinks coffee too late at night and reads Shakespeare before bed and _hates_ the tides. But changes like weight loss and grey hair and a quieter voice feel more sudden after prolonged absence, and fifteen years is more than prolonged, it's practically infinite.

"It happens," Remus says. Finally, he turns to face Sirius too, and he's grateful for the darkness because he doesn't want to see.

They fall asleep like that, dreamless and restless, and when they wake the air is cool and crisp and the mud the dog tracks in smells like summer.


End file.
